FARMER Harry 's profile
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FARMER Harry

  • School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
  • Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, Social sciences

Recommendations:  0

Review:  1

Areas of expertise
Dr Harry Farmer is a Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Greenwich. Harry obtained a BSc Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Bristol and then an MSc in Psychological Research from the University of Oxford before completing his PhD in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2014. He worked as a Research Associate in Social Neuroscience at UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience between 2014 and 2018 and as a Research Associate in Virtual Reality at the University of Bath between 2017 and 2020. He joined the University of Greenwich in 2020. Harry's research interests centre on self-representation and social cognition. He currently lecturers in social cognition and cross-cultural psychology. Harry's research focuses on the relationship between the self and social cognition and encompasses a wide range of methodological techniques including conceptual analysis, psycho-physics, physiological recording, neuro-imaging and virtual reality. He is particularly interested in how the plasticity of self-representation at both the bodily and conceptual level can be used to modulate social attitudes including prejudice, the influence of social factors on dynamic social interaction and the computational basis of similarity learning.

Review:  1

15 Nov 2023
STAGE 1

Somatosensory Response Changes During Illusory Finger Stretching

Kirralise J. Hansford, Daniel H. Baker, Kirsten J. McKenzie & Catherine E. J. Preston https://osf.io/p9ftz

Neural responses to a finger-stretching illusion in human somatosensory cortex

Recommended by based on reviews by Harry Farmer, Alexandra Mitchell and Susanne Stoll
Chronic pain is a major cause of disability that can often poorly managed with pharmacological treatments. This has prompted the exploration of other interventions like resizing illusions of body parts in augmented reality. These illusions have shown promise in conditions like osteoarthritis and complex regional pain syndrome, but it remains unclear how they alter the neural representation of body parts in the brain. The study by Hansford and colleagues aims to investigate these mechanisms in healthy participants, using somatosensory steady state evoked potentials (SSEP) and self-report questionnaires.
 
The study will involve finger stretching in an augmented reality setup that allows the researchers to independently manipulate visual and tactical stimulation. Assuming that multisensory stimulation indeed produces a robust illusion, the researchers will quantify the somatosensory evoked potentials in multisensory, unisensory, and two non-illusion control conditions. The study will provide inights into the neural mechanisms of these illusions and lay the ground for future investigations of these processes as a potential treatment for chronic pain.
 
The manuscript was evaluated over seven rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and three expert reviewers. After substantial revisions, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/u6gsb
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

References
 
1. Hansford, K. J., Baker, D. H., McKenzie, K. J., & Preston, C. E. J. (2023). Somatosensory Response Changes During Illusory Finger Stretching. In principle acceptance of Version 7 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/u6gsb
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FARMER Harry

  • School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
  • Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, Social sciences

Recommendations:  0

Review:  1

Areas of expertise
Dr Harry Farmer is a Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Greenwich. Harry obtained a BSc Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Bristol and then an MSc in Psychological Research from the University of Oxford before completing his PhD in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2014. He worked as a Research Associate in Social Neuroscience at UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience between 2014 and 2018 and as a Research Associate in Virtual Reality at the University of Bath between 2017 and 2020. He joined the University of Greenwich in 2020. Harry's research interests centre on self-representation and social cognition. He currently lecturers in social cognition and cross-cultural psychology. Harry's research focuses on the relationship between the self and social cognition and encompasses a wide range of methodological techniques including conceptual analysis, psycho-physics, physiological recording, neuro-imaging and virtual reality. He is particularly interested in how the plasticity of self-representation at both the bodily and conceptual level can be used to modulate social attitudes including prejudice, the influence of social factors on dynamic social interaction and the computational basis of similarity learning.